This ranking measures administration integrity with the narrowest countable standard available: criminal indictments and convictions of executive-branch officials arising from conduct connected to their government service. The counts draw on Watergate Special Prosecution Force records held by the National Archives, the Final Report of Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh on Iran-Contra (1993), Department of Justice case records, and the indictment-count compilation verified by PolitiFact in January 2020. Conduct is attributed to the administration in which it occurred, not the administration in which charges were filed; Iran-Contra charges brought in 1992 count against the Reagan record. Guilty pleas count as convictions. Convictions later overturned or pardoned are counted as initial outcomes and flagged in the entry.
What is deliberately ignored: unproven allegations, congressional censure votes without criminal referral, media scandal counts, civil suits, and the conduct of campaign organizations and family members, which is reported in the narrative where documented but excluded from the official-conduct count. Presidents' own adjudicated findings (impeachment verdicts, contempt citations) are noted as tiebreakers, not primary inputs. Ranks are ordinal and rescaled to a 100-point score; rank 1 is the cleanest documented record.
Both parties are judged by the same ruler. The framework pays no attention to which party a president belonged to. A guilty plea by a Democratic cabinet secretary and a guilty plea by a Republican national security adviser count identically. Donald Trump's second term is excluded because it is ongoing as of July 2026; only completed administrations are ranked.
", "entries": [ { "rank": 1, "name": "Joe Biden", "detail": "Democrat, 2021-2025", "score": "97.5", "blurb": "Zero executive-branch officials indicted or convicted for conduct in office across the full term (Department of Justice records through January 2025). The federal conviction of the president's son arose from private conduct and falls outside the official-conduct count." }, { "rank": 2, "name": "Gerald Ford", "detail": "Republican, 1974-1977", "score": "95.0", "blurb": "Zero administration officials indicted or convicted for conduct in office during his 2.4-year tenure (Department of Justice records). His pardon of Richard Nixon on September 8, 1974 is noted in the narrative but is not an act within this count." }, { "rank": 3, "name": "Jimmy Carter", "detail": "Democrat, 1977-1981", "score": "92.8", "blurb": "Zero convictions of officials for conduct in office. Budget director Bert Lance was indicted in 1979 over pre-office banking practices and acquitted in 1980; a special counsel inquiry into the Billy Carter matter produced no charges against officials (DOJ records; Senate report, 1980)." }, { "rank": 4, "name": "Barack Obama", "detail": "Democrat, 2009-2017", "score": "88.4", "blurb": "One conviction in eight years: CIA Director David Petraeus pleaded guilty in 2015 to a misdemeanor for mishandling classified materials shared with his biographer, conduct from his time in office (DOJ, United States v. Petraeus, 2015). No other administration official was indicted for conduct in office." }, { "rank": 5, "name": "George H. W. Bush", "detail": "Republican, 1989-1993", "score": "84.0", "blurb": "One conviction for in-office conduct: U.S. Treasurer Catalina Vasquez Villalpando pleaded guilty in 1994 to obstruction and tax charges tied to her tenure (DOJ records). Defense Secretary nominee-era figure Caspar Weinberger was indicted in 1992 for Reagan-era Iran-Contra conduct, counted against the Reagan record, and pardoned before trial." }, { "rank": 6, "name": "Bill Clinton", "detail": "Democrat, 1993-2001", "score": "80.6", "blurb": "Two cabinet-level indictments: Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, acquitted on all 30 counts in 1998, and HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, who pleaded guilty in 1999 to a misdemeanor false-statement charge (independent counsel records). The president himself was held in civil contempt in 1999 and impeached and acquitted, noted as a tiebreaker." }, { "rank": 7, "name": "George W. Bush", "detail": "Republican, 2001-2009", "score": "74.2", "blurb": "At least two felony convictions for in-office conduct: vice-presidential chief of staff I. Lewis Libby, convicted in 2007 of perjury and obstruction in the CIA leak investigation, sentence commuted, later pardoned; and GSA chief of staff David Safavian, convicted in the Abramoff inquiry (DOJ; United States v. Libby, 2007)." }, { "rank": 8, "name": "Donald Trump (first term)", "detail": "Republican, 2017-2021", "score": "62.5", "blurb": "National Security Adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty twice to lying to the FBI about official contacts, then was pardoned; trade adviser Peter Navarro and strategist Steve Bannon were later convicted of contempt of Congress over subpoenas concerning their service (DOJ; Special Counsel report, 2019). PolitiFact counted seven convictions among Trump associates by January 2020, most from the campaign rather than the administration." }, { "rank": 9, "name": "Ronald Reagan", "detail": "Republican, 1981-1989", "score": "55.8", "blurb": "Roughly 26 people charged and 16 convicted across Iran-Contra (14 charged, 11 convicted, including Poindexter and North, both overturned on appeal, and Weinberger, pardoned pre-trial), the HUD influence-peddling scandal, the EPA Superfund affair, and lobbying cases against aides Deaver and Nofziger (Walsh Final Report, 1993; PolitiFact, 2020)." }, { "rank": 10, "name": "Richard Nixon", "detail": "Republican, 1969-1974", "score": "41.3", "blurb": "The largest criminal record of any administration: 69 people charged and 48 convicted in Watergate-related cases, including Attorney General John Mitchell, chief of staff H. R. Haldeman, and domestic adviser John Ehrlichman, all imprisoned (National Archives, Watergate Special Prosecution Force records). Vice President Agnew pleaded no contest to tax evasion in 1973 and the president resigned facing impeachment." } ], "narrative": [ { "heading": "Counting instead of characterizing", "html": "Integrity is usually argued with adjectives. This table argues it with dockets. The question is narrow: how many executive-branch officials in each administration were criminally charged, and how many convicted, for conduct connected to their government service? Charges are public records. Convictions are public records. Everything else, including the reader's opinion of any president, is out of scope.
The counting rules force consistency. Conduct is charged to the administration where it happened, so the 1992 Weinberger indictment lands on Reagan's ledger, not George H. W. Bush's. Guilty pleas count as convictions. Pardons and appellate reversals are recorded but do not erase the initial outcome, because the metric measures documented conduct, not eventual mercy. Campaign officials and relatives are reported in the narrative but excluded from the official count, which is why the convictions of Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, and Roger Stone appear below as facts about the Trump orbit rather than entries in the administration column, and why Hunter Biden's 2024 convictions do not appear in the Biden count at all.
" }, { "heading": "The two heaviest ledgers", "html": "Nixon's administration remains the benchmark for documented criminality. The Watergate Special Prosecution Force ultimately charged 69 people, and 48 were convicted or pleaded guilty, including the former attorney general, the White House chief of staff, and the president's chief domestic adviser, each of whom served prison time (National Archives, Watergate records). Separately, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned in October 1973 after pleading no contest to tax evasion. The president himself resigned on August 9, 1974, ahead of near-certain impeachment.
Reagan's is second. Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh's final report documents 14 people charged in Iran-Contra, with 11 convictions; the convictions of John Poindexter and Oliver North were overturned on appeal because of immunized testimony, and six figures including Caspar Weinberger were pardoned in December 1992 (Walsh Final Report, 1993). Beyond Iran-Contra, the HUD scandal, the EPA Superfund affair that produced a perjury conviction of Rita Lavelle, and lobbying convictions of former aides Michael Deaver and Lyn Nofziger, the latter overturned, bring the widely cited totals to roughly 26 charged and 16 convicted (PolitiFact, 2020).
" }, { "heading": "The clean ledgers, and one misdemeanor each", "html": "Four administrations since 1969 produced zero felony convictions of officials for in-office conduct: Ford, Carter, Obama, and Biden. The distinctions among them are thin and the table says so. Ford's tenure was short. Carter's budget director was indicted for pre-office conduct and acquitted. Obama's eight years produced exactly one conviction, the 2015 misdemeanor plea of CIA Director David Petraeus for mishandling classified material. Biden's four years produced none among officials, per Department of Justice records through January 2025.
Clinton's ledger is frequently misremembered in both directions. His administration produced two cabinet indictments and one conviction, the Cisneros misdemeanor plea, and Espy was acquitted on every count. The heavier findings attached to the president personally: a federal judge held him in contempt in 1999 for misleading testimony in the Jones case, he was impeached and acquitted, and he surrendered his law license. The table records officials first and notes the president's own adjudicated findings as a tiebreaker, which is why Clinton sits sixth rather than higher.
" }, { "heading": "The partisan pattern is in the data, and so is the caution", "html": "Summing the modern era, PolitiFact's 2020 review found on the order of 142 indictments connected to the Nixon, Reagan, and Trump administrations against two connected to the Carter, Clinton, and Obama administrations, a gap too large to be an artifact of counting choices (PolitiFact, January 2020). The framework did not seek that result. It fell out of the dockets. Both parties are judged by the same ruler, and if the distribution of outcomes is uneven, the unevenness belongs to the record.
The caution is equally factual. Prosecution counts measure prosecuted conduct, not all conduct. Independent counsel statutes existed for only part of this period, special counsels have varied in aggressiveness, and a determined attorney general can narrow what gets charged. Trump's second term is excluded as incomplete as of July 2026 and will be scored when it ends, by the same rules applied to everyone above.
" } ], "settled": "The record settles the extremes. Nixon's administration generated the most criminal convictions of any in American history, 48 in Watergate-related cases including the attorney general and White House chief of staff. Reagan's is second, anchored by 11 Iran-Contra convictions documented in the Walsh Report. Ford, Carter, and Biden produced zero convictions of officials for in-office conduct, and Obama produced one misdemeanor in eight years. These are court outcomes, not characterizations.", "contested": "What remains contested is whether prosecution counts fully capture integrity. Defenders of low-count administrations note that aggressive independent counsels sometimes found nothing, as with Espy's 30-count acquittal. Critics of the metric note that conduct can go uncharged when a Justice Department declines to investigate its own, and that pardons, used by presidents of both parties for their own officials, blunt accountability without changing the count. Both points are fair, which is why this table reports initial outcomes, flags reversals and pardons, and claims to measure the documented record rather than all behavior.", "charts": [ { "type": "bar", "title": "Convictions of officials or close associates linked to each administration (strict count, see methodology)", "unit": "convictions", "data": [ { "label": "Nixon", "value": 48 }, { "label": "Reagan", "value": 16 }, { "label": "Trump (1st)", "value": 7 }, { "label": "G.W. Bush", "value": 2 }, { "label": "Clinton", "value": 1 }, { "label": "G.H.W. Bush", "value": 1 }, { "label": "Obama", "value": 1 }, { "label": "Carter", "value": 0 }, { "label": "Ford", "value": 0 }, { "label": "Biden", "value": 0 } ] }, { "type": "bar", "title": "People criminally charged in the largest administration scandals", "unit": "people charged", "data": [ { "label": "Watergate (Nixon)", "value": 69 }, { "label": "HUD scandal (Reagan)", "value": 18 }, { "label": "Iran-Contra (Reagan)", "value": 14 }, { "label": "Mueller inquiry, all defendants (Trump 1st)", "value": 34 }, { "label": "CIA leak case (G.W. Bush)", "value": 1 }, { "label": "Espy inquiry (Clinton)", "value": 1 } ] } ], "sources": [ { "title": "National Archives, Watergate investigation records (Special Prosecution Force)", "url": "https://www.archives.gov/research/investigations/watergate" }, { "title": "Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters (Walsh Report), 1993", "url": "https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/walsh/" }, { "title": "PolitiFact, Many more criminal indictments under Trump, Reagan and Nixon than under Obama, Clinton and Carter (January 2020)", "url": "https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jan/09/facebook-posts/many-more-criminal-indictments-under-trump-reagan-/" }, { "title": "Department of Justice, United States v. David Petraeus plea documents, 2015", "url": "https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdnc/pr/david-petraeus-pleads-guilty-unauthorized-removal-and-retention-classified-material" }, { "title": "Department of Justice, Special Counsel's Office report (Mueller Report), 2019", "url": "https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf" }, { "title": "Gigafact, Have there been significantly more criminal actions against Republican administrations than Democratic ones?", "url": "https://gigafact.org/fact-briefs/have-there-been-significantly-more-criminal-actions-taken-against-republican-presidential-administrations-than-democratic-ones/" }, { "title": "Wikipedia compilation of court records, List of American federal politicians convicted of crimes", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_federal_politicians_convicted_of_crimes" }, { "title": "Al Jazeera, A timeline of past presidential scandals (2023)", "url": "https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/15/before-trump-indictments-a-timeline-of-past-presidential-scandals" } ], "faq": [ { "q": "Which administration had the most criminal convictions?", "a": "Nixon's. Watergate-related prosecutions charged 69 people and convicted 48, including Attorney General John Mitchell and chief of staff H. R. Haldeman, per National Archives records. Reagan's administration is second with roughly 16 convictions across Iran-Contra, HUD, EPA, and lobbying cases." }, { "q": "Which administrations had zero convictions of officials?", "a": "Ford, Carter, and Biden produced zero convictions of executive-branch officials for conduct in office. Obama's eight years produced one, the 2015 misdemeanor guilty plea of CIA Director David Petraeus." }, { "q": "Do campaign officials count in these numbers?", "a": "No. Convictions of campaign figures such as Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen are documented in the narrative but excluded from the administration-official count, because the metric is conduct connected to government service. The same rule excludes presidents' relatives." }, { "q": "Why is Trump's second term not ranked?", "a": "It is ongoing as of July 2026, and this table ranks only completed administrations so every president is measured over a full record. It will be scored under identical rules when it ends." } ] }